The Love of a Father
by batrax
Summary: This is a one-shot spin-off of 'Lady Archimedes', sequel of 'The Arithmancer', an amazing HP fic by White Squirrel, but actually it could be applied to a lot more fanfictions and maybe even to the original story. In my opinion, this is what would happen if Hermione's parents were not forced to behave like NPCs by plot requirement. Divergence from 'Lady Archimedes' at chapter 23.


Disclaimer: All which is Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling. From this we find that that the quadratic formula derived from the parabola which defines the area of Harry Potter has three solutions: J, K, and Rowling. All three are real.

User _White Squirrel_ is the author of the fanfiction of which this is a spin-off.

* * *

Dan was sitting in Dumbledore's office, alone with the Headmaster, on a comfortable cushioned chair across from the Headmaster's desk, and was waiting.

"Mr. Granger" said the Headmaster, soliciting, "I implore you to reconsider. I'm perfectly aware of how awful the situation must be from your perspective, but to go to such lengths-"

"You can stop there" interrupted Dan, looking at Dumbledore in his piercing blue eyes, "this situation has been going on for long enough, it's about time someone took measures."

Dumbledore stared at him with an emotion that he wasn't able to catch, maybe because there was more than one to decipher.

There was no going back now. His little girl had suffered way more than he was willing to allow, and the scarred _I must not tell lies_ engraved on the back of her hand with _four thousand, one hundred and ninety-three_ painful incisions had been the proverbial last straw that broke the camel's back.

After five minutes of silence, the flames in the chimney of Dumbledore's office became green and taller, and from them emerged four figures.

Minister Fudge entered the office with arrogant imposition, or at least with what he was trying to convey as imposition, followed by an escort of three aurors, red uniforms and everything.

"What is the meaning of this, Albus?" he said with badly concealed annoyance, "What is this thing of such importance that you deemed necessary to take away from my precious time? And who is this person?"

"This, Minister Fudge, is Mr. Daniel Granger, the father of Miss Hermione Granger, that you surely remember", replied Dumbledore steadily, "And he has some things of the uttermost importance to let you know."

"You called me all the way to Hogwarts to talk with a _muggle_?" asked the minister, obviously scandalized, "And what could he have to say of such importance that would justify dragging me all the way over here?". Dan felt a little insulted at the strong emphasis on the 'muggle', but kept his head cool.

"It's a matter of incredible sensitivity, Cornelius, you may want to ask your aurors to leave the room."

At that the minister seemed to tense immediately, so Dumbledore added quickly "I know that our relationships haven't been of the best kind these past months, Cornelius, but you know you can trust me to refrain from doing anything questionable. This really is a delicate matter, one that could make a difference in how people will remember you in the coming decades, maybe centuries, and you may want to keep it private. Should you change your mind, you can call them back inside the room at any moment."

Fudge was evidently intrigued by the mention of his reputation in future centuries, and after a minute of silent deliberation, he sent the aurors out in the staircase.

"What is this matter then, Mr. Granger? I'm very curious as to what a muggle, albeit the parent of a witch, could have to say to the Minister for Magic."

In the few minutes he had the chance to take in the man's character, and from what Hermione had told him, Dan had found little to respect, but he would have to do everything right. Too much was at stake.

"Do you know what a 'dead man's switch' is, Minister?", he asked Fudge.

The minister looked confused, then seemed to search in his memory and come to a conclusion. "I don't recall having ever heard the term, Mr. Granger." he said, seemingly annoyed.

"To put it in simple terms" said Dan, "imagine a magical artefact, let's say a dark one, that will activate only once the holder lets go of it. Can you picture it, Minister?"

"Of course" replied Fudge, piqued.

"Well, in the muggle world, 'dead man's switch' is a phrase used to indicate a device that will activate only once the person holding it lets it go. It is often used by criminals to blackmail the police -muggle aurors- into granting their requests, usually holding hostages in a way that if the criminal is taken down, or otherwise incapacitated, and lets go of the device, there will be terrible consequences for the hostages. In time it has become a more general term."

"Yes, yes" said Fudge, losing patience, "come to the point."

"The point, Minister, is that I currently own one such device, and my hostage is the wizarding world."

Fudge seemed to have a hard time absorbing the message. "Mr. Granger, I don't understand what you-"

"I've gone with my daughter to Diagon Alley", interrupted Dan, "and I bought books on the customs of Magical Britain and other nations. I bought books of charms, books of Potions, Herbology, Magical Creatures, History, Arithmancy, Runes, Quiddich even, and many many others. I've got magical photographs and newspapers, I've got the potion kits my daughter devised for muggles and squibs, a stack of charged rune circles, magical toys and tools, and years of my notes on the differences and quirks of your culture."

"Congratulations on being a diligent parent, Mr. Granger, but I still don't see what you mean."

"Here it is, Minister. This past week, I've put all this stuff inside sealed boxes and sent them to people I trust around the world, with the order to unseal the boxes and publish the material should I ever lack to perform a certain action at regular intervals, in the future. After having done so, I had Hermione ask Mr. Sirius Black to _obliviate_ that day of my life, and to perform the incantation in a way that my memories would be forever irretrievable."

Finally, Fudge got what Dan said. He paled to the shade of a sheet of paper, his eyes as wide as his face allowed, and started to sway so much that Dumbledore had to conjure a chair behind him before he fainted to the floor.

"This is madness. You want to sabotage the Statute of Secrecy? You want an open war with muggles? And for what?"

Dan stared at Fudge with all the anger that he had felt in the past years toward the whole magical world. " _Mine_ is madness, Minister? What about sending soul-eating monsters patrolling a _school_?" he said with an edge of ice in his voice. "What about endangering the life of students with your _incompetence_? What about controlling the print to publish only arguments in line with your agenda, and in doing so portraying a child as mad, your best wizard" he said, indicating the Headmaster "as senile, and my own daughter as a thief, after all the hard work she has done to reach her results? What about that _psychopath_ woman that you forcibly positioned to teach in this school, and that imposed twenty-eight ours of self-inflicted wounds on my daughter and her friend?!"

The Minister what sitting there without mouthing a word, probably as much shaken by the risk for the security as for the harsh critique to his actions. Then he managed a "why do you want to destroy our word?"

"I don't want to destroy your world, but you hurt my daughter, Minister. You endangered her and humiliated her and wounded her, and I will not accept it any more" Dan replied accusatory.

"You can't risk a war just for one girl-" started Fudge incredulous.

"I would burn down the planet to keep my little girl safe, Minister" Dan said with steel in his voice, staring Fudge straight in the eyes, not faltering for a second.

"I will have you put in Azkaban for life!" Fudge screamed, but Dan didn't even move.

"If you put him in Azkaban, Cornelius" interjected Dumbledore, "he won't be able to stop the other muggles from opening the boxes."

"Then we will Imperius him, and force him to do it anyway-"

"So much for your moral compass... I guess that I shouldn't be surprised. That wouldn't work anyway, Hermione and I racked our brains to come up with a solution, and we found one. The system we put up won't activate if there is any magical influence over me, or if anyone but me performs that action."

If had been incredibly difficult to do, but they set up a room in which no kind of magic or magical influence could enter (it took Hermione a whole week to come up with something that could work). In their basement was a new computer with half a password, randomly generated and unknown to him. Hermione was keeping the other half safe, at least until he would come back home and read it, then destroy the piece of paper it was written on. To memorize it before meeting a known mind reader such as Dumbledore had seemed like a needless risk.

They had had to cover the walls, roof and floor with layers of metal, but Hermione had become very good at electromagnetic shielding while researching her last paper. Then they called an old friend of his who had gotten in the electronic business, and asked him to cover the whole room with electromagnetic detectors. He put wires (that would work as aerials) in place, connected to an electromagnetic field detector that would output a signal if anything more distorting than a human being entered in the room, then shut everything up forever. Hermione said it would go nuts with the smallest whiff of magic, she had done the maths, so an Imperius curse would send it haywire like nothing, as would a polijuiced wizard. Maybe even a simple wand would be detected.

That would protect from anything but Legilimency, so he asked Hermione to come up with something like a magic DNA decoding system. She made up something with runes that needed a drop of his blood that he would put on a piece of paper and insert on a small orb. The orb then would roll inside a tube that looped out of the room (where no magic could be taken) and was covered in runes that would again shut everything down if the blood was not his.

The looping tube had been the most fragile node of the setup, so they had to shield it like they had with the room, put a cabinet around it, and put the same magic-detecting switch inside the cabinet as well. They then covered it in concrete, for good measure.

It had been a straining job to say the least, which costed him money and favours, but they felt relatively sure with the set-up, at the end.

According to Hermione, it would withstand any magical tampering she knew of.

"That is preposterous! Everyone knows the Imperius curse is undetectable" retorted Fudge.

"I heard that. But my daughter is brilliant, and she managed to do it."

Fudge closed his eyes for some seconds "A Thief's Downfall, then. But Goblins do not sell it to anyone, and for all of your daughter's intelligence, you couldn't have made one by yourselves. The best wizard researchers have tried for centuries and nobody succeeded. The only possibility is that you are bluffing" said Fudge, apparently trying to convince himself.

"I'm not, Minister. And in any case, you can't afford the risk of not believing me" he said, without betraying any surprise at Fudge's mistake, but he made a mental note to tell Hermione about this 'Thief's Downfall'.

Fudge looked at Dumbledore imploring. "Albus, do something! You can hate me all you want, but you _must_ protect our world! Before the Statute of Secrecy was there, muggles were killing us by the dozen! We can't go back to those times."

Dan doubted that the modern world would turn on magic like that, but the biggest nations would likely meddle in magical affairs, take away many of their freedoms and require wizards and witches to lend them their powers. It was still bad, but there was no need to take the scare away from Fudge.

"I don't hate you at all, Cornelius, but I fear there is nothing I could do, at this point" Dumbledore replied gravely. "I used Legilimency on you, Mr. Granger. I hope you understand, you posed a threat that I have to contain by any possible mean" -Dan nodded- "And I'm sorry to say, Cornelius, that Mr. and Miss Granger have us all in a checkmate."

Fudge stared at the Headmaster incredulous, then he slouched on the chair, defeated, deflated, as if all happiness had gone away from the world.

"What do you want me to do?" he said finally.

"I _wanted_ , before you cornered my family, to send my daughter to study in a safe place, and with this impending threat of Voldemort, we could still want to do that..." he said. Fudge recoiled away with a sudden motion at hearing the name.

"He is not back!" he all but shouted, his face pale again.

"Cornelius, be reasonable" Dumbledore said softly, "you and I both know that you _know_ , in your heart, that he's back, but you are just too afraid to admit it to yourself."

"He can't be back, Albus" he pleaded to the Headmaster, "He can't. I don't know what to do if he is."

"Then, I will make matters simpler for you" said Dan, making Fudge tense again. "If you let Voldemort act in the shadow because you are too scared to accept his return, then you are endangering my daughter, and I will have to reveal magic to the world. If you don't collaborate with Headmaster Dumbledore in his efforts to stop him, you are indirectly putting my daughter in danger as well, and I will have to reveal magic to the world. Maybe a tank would be able to deal with Voldemort better than all of you could, and even if it couldn't, I have less doubts about the effectiveness of five million tanks.

"You are blatantly inadequate in your office, Minister, but I will remit to Dumbledore the decision to leave you on your seat or force you away." he said, and Fudge glanced at Dumbledore, "but in any case, that Umbridge woman will be dispatched from Hogwarts, and a more fitting teacher will be found. As you can tell, we decided to let Hermione finish the school year here, because she insists Hogwarts will remain the safest place in Britain in the near future. Of course, it was supposed to be safe in the passed years as well" he scolded the Headmaster, who had the decency to look appropriately contrite. "I hope that, by joining your efforts, you will be able to stop this conflict before it reaches the status of open war."

Fudge looked up at him, then at Dumbledore, then at him again. "Will that be all?"

"For now, yes, Minister. In the future, after this whole threat of dark wizards is gone, and if I won't have to reveal your existence to the muggle world in order to keep my daughter safe, we will discuss of some aspects of your legislation that are stuck in the middle ages, and are frankly inhumane, like allowing a school to inflict corporal punishment on its students. But those matters will be more open to discussion."

Fudge stared at his acid green hat that he had kept in his lap for the whole time, and nodded. Without saying a word he rose from the chair in which he had collapsed earlier, went to the door and retrieved his escort. He took a pinch of powder from the jar over the chimney, and threw it in the fire, who turned emerald green. "I will meet you tomorrow morning at nine, Albus. Here, if you please."

"Of course, Cornelius" replied the Headmaster, still grave, "of course. I have a number of plans to present to you, and a number of evidences if you still have doubts."

Fudge nodded again, then entered in the green flames with a murmur about the Ministry of Magic, followed by his aurors.

"You might have saved this country today, Mr. Granger" said Dumbledore as soon as they were gone, "even if I don't like your methods."

"I know, Headmaster, but I had to protect my daughter, and the only leverage I have over you world is the threat of six billion muggles. It was all or nothing, and I couldn't do nothing anymore."

"I understand. Mind that this will cause a lot of trouble in the future, for other parents of muggle-borns. I don't know what Cornelius can come up with, but I hope you haven't put a severe strain on our relationships with your plot."

"I thought about it, Headmaster, for a long time" replied Dan, "and the only thing I can say in my defence, is that I would go even further to protect Hermione. She didn't deserve anything of what she's been through, nor did her friends."

"I agree. Please, don't forget to send your messages in a timely fashion, Mr. Granger."

"I won't", Dan said, and got up to leave the office.

"Thank you" he heard, barely over a whisper, as he had just put his hand over the handle. Without turning, he nodded and exited the office, to go back home to his family.


End file.
